What is as hard as stone, strong as steel, clear as glass, light as wood, and springy as rubber? Plastics can be like all of these things.

Plastics are materials used to make a wide variety of products. Plastics cost less than many other materials. Plastics do not rot like wood. They do not rust like metals. Plastics can be any color. You use plastics everyday.

Your computer case is made of hard, strong plastic. You drink out of cups made of light plastic foam. You wear clothes and walk on carpets made of plastic threads. You buy food and other goods covered in clear plastic wrap. Plastic is everywhere around you.

WHERE DOES PLASTIC COME FROM?

Plastic comes mainly from fossil fuels. Oil, coal, and natural gas are fossil fuels. The building blocks of fossil fuels are the chemicals hydrogen and carbon. Like all chemicals, hydrogen and carbon are made from atoms, tiny bits of matter much too small to see. Everything is made of atoms.

You make plastic by heating fossil fuels and adding other chemicals. The hydrogen and carbon atoms link together. The atoms join together like beads on a string. The long chains of atoms are what make plastics special. Metal, glass, wood, and clay are made of short chains of atoms.

MOLDING PLASTIC

Plastic starts out as a hot, sticky goo, called resin. The resin gets made into car parts, compact disks, plastic bottles, and all the different kinds of plastic products.

To make plastic products, the heated resin is poured or forced into a mold. The resin cools and hardens into the shape of the mold. In fact, the word plastic comes from Latin and Greek words that mean to mold.

DOES PLASTIC HARM THE ENVIRONMENT?

People in the United States throw millions of tons of plastic away every year. Plastics do not easily break down, or degrade. Plastics fill up garbage dumps, called landfills. Plastics are a major source of pollution.

Using less plastic helps reduce the amount of plastic waste. Making thinner plastic bottles and other containers uses less plastic.

Many plastics can be recycled, or reused. Recycled plastics are used to make new plastic products. Recycling reduces the amount of plastic that gets dumped in landfills.